Thanks for this article, bravo! I’ve been doing this work for more than two decades with global brands and I agree — personas are only useful when they are based on research. Not everyone has large research budgets, but some research must be used to develop personas with integrity. Our agency recently completed research for a global NGO with a quant sample size of 400, complemented by 40 in-depth one-on-one interviews, but we suggest that ten interviews (or one focus group or collaborative design session) per persona is enough to collect good data — and most organizations can manage that. It’s part of the methodology we use at Big Thinkers Society, and we also teach it as part of our digital strategy class. When clients insist on skipping it, we suggest they work with creative and take a genius design approach. One other note— having led UX groups at large agencies for the past 20 years, I’d also suggest that we need to better equip younger UX team members with the skills to advocate for true design thinking work. It’s one thing to teach the “how to” part, and another to be able to get a client or organizations to sign off on actually doing it.